Rose Prince considered saint to many
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians. Rose Prince entered the Indian residential school at Lejac in 1922, the same year Dr. Peter Bryce, former general medical superintendent in the Department of Indian Affairs, wrote The Story of a National Crime, his indictment of official indifference. He reported death rates for residential schoolchildren ranged from 30 to 60 per cent.
Prince was at Lejac in 1937 when four lads aged seven to nine fled into a January night across Fraser Lake. It was -30 C. They were found frozen, huddled in each other’s arms. Nobody asked why the search party wasn’t raised until 16 hours after they perished.
Journalist Claude Adams recounts a story told to him by Jack Lacerte about his father, Philippe Lacerte, the school caretaker, who refused to participate in making sure stories agreed. He was dismissed. After the school closed in 1976, the Nadleh Indian Band razed it. Only the cemetery and a memorial to Rose Prince remain.
The memorial remains because she helped children through their ordeals of loneliness and fear. She never lost her faith, or compassion. She did mending, cleaning, embroidering, sewing — a patient, gentle, reassuring presence. Prince died in 1949 at the age of 33.
Prince was born in Fort St. James in 1915 to Jean Marie and Angelina Prince, the third of nine children. She was taken to Lejac at the age of six, never to leave. If there was a saintliness to her self-sacrifice and devotion, many Roman Catholics believe it is because she was a saint.
After death, her corpse stayed warm for hours, although tests confirmed she was dead. In 1951, it was decided to transfer the dead from the old cemetery to a new one. Her coffin was opened. Her body was perfectly preserved. “Everyone was astounded,” a witness told the Prince George Citizen. “Her face, her body, everything looked like she’d just been laid down to sleep, like she’d only been in there an hour.” That witness was Jack Lacerte.
Today, more than 1,000 pilgrims a year visit her grave and pray for healing miracles. Is she a saint? Only God knows the answer, but many believe so.